CafeChatNoir

At Christmas, our angel Sharyn mentioned that she’d recently noticed that my grandmother needed some new bedsheets, and she’d not had a chance to get out and procure them. Not a big deal, we could easily make a Target run and take care of it, which we did. An exceptionally easy task – and in the past two and a half years, there have been precious few of those. We agreed to keep any “change is BAD!” drama to a minimum and we’d leave the new sheets in a cabinet in the garage and she’d swap them out on another day. (There was enough upheaval by our presence to begin with, there was no reason to actively add to it.) Nice sheets were procured and left in the drop zone and I thought nothing more of it until the other evening.

I was talking to Sharyn on a completely unrelated matter and she mentioned,

“If you see a check for Costco, it’s because I have to get new sheets for her.”
Me: “Wait, didn’t you find the sheets in the cabinet after Christmas?”
Her: “Yes, but they were white.”
Me: *Thinking, thinking, thinking…* “Well, yes, I guess they were white…” (I thought her old sheets were white as well, but perhaps not!)
Her: “Apparently white sheets make her think of the lining of a coffin.”
Me: “WTF??!?? I just got white, cause I thought she had them, and because white goes with everything!!!!!!”
Her: “I know, I know.”
Me: “Christ, now she doesn’t only think that I want to ’stuff her in a nursing home’, she thinks I want to put her in a coffin!!!”
Her: “Nah, I told her that I bought them – she doesn’t think you want to kill her.”
Me: “Thank you for taking that bullet for me, cause, well, I already have many strikes against me.”
Her: “You’re doing the best you can, and I am not going to give her any unwarranted ammunition.”

I swear, I am the only person that could go out and buy nice super-high thread count sheets and my grandmother would interpret it as a sign of death. And to top it all off, I sent purple/blue irises for Mother’s Day. (Which I sent to all my ‘Moms’ – cause they were REALLY PRETTY!!!) and now that I think about it – back in the day – purple flowers were funeral flowers. Yeah, I’m the only idiot on the planet that sends ‘funeral flowers’ to an 87 year old woman. I REALLY THOUGHT THEY WERE PRETTY!!!!!

I really cannot fathom how I could be any worse at this endeavor of taking care of my grandmother.

Not all my stuff, but I have noticed lately that there are certain items in my life that seem to simply disappear. Some reappear in spades after replacement, but not all. I will admit to being more than a tad stymied by it all.

1. Mini Mag Lites. Every July I go and buy 4 Mini Mag Lites for the beach trip. It’s the middle of summer, thunderstorms and power outages happen, and if you’re in an unfamiliar house, it’s nice to have a little flashlight on the nightstand should you wake in the middle of the night and have to make your way to the bathroom without breaking an ankle. (I do try to be the hostess with the mostest.) We go to the beach with 4 little flashlights and come home with 4 flashlights in the Beach Equipment Box. By Christmas, I am lucky if there are still two of these flashlights in the box or the pencil holder on the kitchen desk. By March I am usually down to one flashlight and both bulbs have burned out on it…

This begs the question – where the hell did the other 3 flashlights go? In theory, they should turn up in various places about the house as I go about my day to day business. Except that they don’t. If I ever move out of here, I am quite certain I am going to find some sort of packrat nest that has about 20 Mini Mag Lites in it.

2. Hex keys. Given all the various and sundry things I have purchased from Ikea over the years, I should have at least 3 of every size and shape of hex key available. And yet, I have none. (And right now, I need some.)

3. Hair clips. These do a disappearing and reappearing act. As soon as I am down to one of these spring loaded barrettes, I go snag another 3 pack of them at the drug store. And a week later, I find I have a dozen of them.

4. Fluffy black socks. A few weeks into the fall, it’s always the same thing. I find I have 4 pairs of fluffy black socks to wear with my Timberlands. I check the pending laundry – no fluffy black socks. I hit Kohls, get a six pack of socks, and three days later, I will do a load of laundry and there are 10 pairs of fluffy black socks in it… The upside is that I won’t run out of socks for near three weeks, but seriously – WHERE WERE MY SOCKS????

I’d blame the cats, but this has been going on for too long, and even during the year I was catless. (I can’t blame the dog, he’s not much into the ‘taking stuff and hiding it’ games.)

Not that all my other days suck by any means, but there are so many days where things are off to a good start and then something or someone incredibly stupid comes along and just shoots the day all to hell. Well, not today!!

- First, I woke up before my alarm clock, and NOT because of the trash trucks coming through!* It was one of those, “roll over, realize I’m awake, and I am totally OK with the fact that I am awake” moments.

- Despite waking up before my alarm, I felt GREAT! Can’t remember the last time I had such a spectacular night’s sleep like last night. (And I wish I could say I’d done something different before bed, but I didn’t.) It’s much more fun to have entertaining dreams when you’re running about with Raylan Givens** blowing things up in the name of law enforcement than having dreams where your dead relatives are showing up saying that they’re “taking Grandma to go shopping” and you wake up wondering if that was some otherworldly sign that Grandma is dead…

- When I came downstairs, the dog was exceptionally mellow. Lately, he’s been a bit hyper in the mornings, and he was quite content to go out, come back in and just chill out while I checked my emails and paid bills.

- Carmen was just hilarious today with her reaction to the rain. She was an ANGRY little sleeper. (As it is, she naps with great passion.) She came downstairs, FLUNG herself into my lap, scrunched up her face and slammed her head into my knees and went back to bed in my lap. When Lily came around to see what she was up to, Carmen shoved a foot into her face. Not so awesome for Lily, but hilarious for me.

- I LOVE my new phone. (I went with the Android, and it was the right decision.) So many very spiffy and shiny apps to play with! So far I think my fav is the whitenoise app – nice to go to sleep with the sound of the ocean! (And I’d used it before last night, so I can’t say it was the surefire reason for my excellent sleep, but it could have been a contributing factor.)

- Realizing that this particular phone can easily replace my aircard – I returned the aircard, and being within the 30 days of when I had to replace my previously exploding & catching fire aircard – no termination fee! (That surprised the gent at Radio Shack, but hey, 30 days guaranteed satisfaction is 30 days, and I beat it.)

- Got some cute shots of the kitties today with the phone. (Still kills me that my PHONE now has a camera with as many megapixels as my “good” camera, which is huge and weighs a ton comparatively.)

- Got all the “I really WANT to get this done today” stuff DONE.

- Chicken salad on croissants for dinner. (And lunch tomorrow.) ‘Nuff said.

- Joe Saunders pitched a complete game! No, I’m not an Angels fan, but he went to my high school, and it’s always nice to see a local kid do well. :)

I won’t hold my breath that tomorrow will measure up, but it could still be a fair amount worse and still qualify as decent.

*Seriously, I’d be exceptionally OK with once a week trash pickup if for no other reason than to cut down on noise pollution. Or 5:30 AM wakeup calls.
**Watch Justified on FX.

One day last fall Carmen decided that she would only hang out in the parlor or dining room. By the end of the day I figured out that she had spied the ceiling fan in the living room and felt it to be a nefarious predator from above. Being the complete softie that I am, I turned the fan off. (That and I missed my lap kitty and didn’t want her hanging out elsewhere for any longer than she already had.) After a few days, she came back into the living room.

Well, now it’s summer and we’re having one of those August-in-June heat streaks, so the fan really did have to go back on. This did not sit well with the little princess, and she sequestered herself in the upstairs hallway and the dining room for the better part of the past two days. (And it’s damn hot upstairs for normal creatures. For me, it’s lovely.)

Well, it seems that in the last couple hours, Carmen went to ManUpCamp. I was sitting on the couch and heard a “Mrrp, mrrp, mrrp!” and looked over and she had ventured into the living room and was making her way to me across the back of the couch.

She had decided “Screw the fan, I need lap time!” and we had a nice snuggle session and she’s now draped over the back of one of the chairs. And I know overcoming the ceiling fan was a Big Deal for her with all the fur she left on my shirt, but it seemed that she must have believed it at least one of the times I told her, “Come August, you are going to be SO happy we have these ceiling fans!”

I am seriously so happy she’s back downstairs mainly because it just breaks my heart when any of my pets are scared of anything. I’m glad she’s over it.

On at least one or two occasions, I have stated that whenever my grandmother shuffles off this mortal coil, I will go out to Phoenix, settle things and come home via a couple days in Las Vegas, preferably at the Bellagio. Partly cause I’ve never been to Vegas and partly because I think that *not* doing the now-too-familiar IAD/PHX/IAD round-trip would cement a bit of finality in my brain. (Despite the situation with my grandmother being quite stable at the moment, I feel that it will never end and I will always be waiting for the other shoe to drop. A change of routine should help. I should have been a psych major.) And yes, it’s quite OK to speak of my grandmother’s eventual demise, as it’s one of her very favorite subjects.

My brother knows of these lofty yet tenuous plans. Tonight he tells me that he has realized that six months after my grandmother dies, he’ll be watching Pawn Stars and I’ll show up in the shop selling all of grandma’s stuff.

Mind you, should I ever find myself in Vegas, I will have to stop by Rick Harrison’s shop if for no other reason than to see if I can catch a glimpse of the Old Man or Chumlee. But I doubt I’ll be trying to sell my grandmother’s old school radio/turntable that doubles as a sideboard. (One year when we were out there she told us we could stack the Christmas presents “on the radio” – it wasn’t until halfway through the trip that we realized “the radio” was the 5 foot long cabinet with a receiver, turntable and speakers where I had put things anyway. I had been expecting her to yell at me for putting the stuff in the wrong place.)

Well yes, Memorial Day weekend and 90 degree days do tend to indicate summer has arrived. But in my household there are a few definitive signs.

First being the damn ants. They’re a little late this year, but they are here. They’re the teeny-tiny sugar ants and I can’t for the life of me figure out where on earth they’re getting in the house, but on the upside, they only appear right around the kitchen sink. (I suppose that means they are getting in somewhere around a plumbing conduit, but I couldn’t tell you which one.) The irony of this nonsense is that I have a bottle of “earth-friendly” grapefruit multi-surface cleaner that doesn’t clean for shit, but it will kill ants like nobody’s business. (I suspect it is just a matter of the force from the spray nozzle, but I still find it somewhat amusing. And the sink area is extra clean due to the ant massacres.) Ant trap/killer things are on the grocery list for the next trip to the market. (A couple years ago when I was buying ant traps at the store, the clerk said, “Oh, you must live in Burke! It’s ant season!”)

Second – Moxley has got the seasonal itchies. Every year it is the same – a hotspot on one of his front legs and a incredibly itchy stomach. This year, I told him, “Mox, we’re gonna conquer this without having to go to the vet!!” I was confident in our abilities to take care of this on our own. I went to PetCo and got some non-steriodal treatments and we were gonna kick this without veterinary assistance. (Not that I don’t love our vet, but Mox is getting a touch older and I’d like to avoid steroids if we can for the AwesomeDog.) I wouldn’t put my approach at epic fail, but partial fail. I got some lidocaine/antiseptic/antibite spray which has worked quite well for his leg – it’s already healing quite nicely. For his tummy I got a Vitamin E/B and Oatmeal anti-itch/soothing spray. I didn’t use the other spray because I think if I asked 10 guys, “Is it OK if I spray lidocaine all over your genital area?” I’m pretty sure the answer would be, “Oh HELL no!” Hence, the herbal/organic solution for that. While he isn’t biting his leg anymore, he’s still decidedly itchy elsewhere. (I can’t say how thrilled I’d be if Dr Alt said, “Sure, you can use the lidocaine spray on his stomach.” But if not, whatever makes him less itchy. The biggest problem is that the lidocaine spray is not for dogs *and* cats – and the cats do enjoy attempting to groom him.)

The newest sign is Carmen chilling in the dining room rather than the family room. It was quite hot today and I had to turn on the spinning blades of death from above in the family room, aka the ceiling fan. Last year when she first noticed it, she decided she was perfectly content to hang out in the dining room, but it broke my heart that it scared her, so I turned off the fan. (It was fall, so it was no biggie.) After a couple days, she was fine again. I’m hoping she can get over this with in about the same time with the fan *on* instead of off, cause I really don’t want to try to get through a DC summer without a ceiling fan. (I will if I have to, but I’d like for her to discover the wonder of a ceiling fan in August.)

The final sign is that I am itching (sorry, Mox) to get to the beach. The checks have been cashed, the linen order is in, and I am so ready for an extended change of scenery. We have the same house as last year and it’s an adorable little place (or as I like to say, Cindy-sized) and I am just beyond ready for the salt air and napping on the deck and talking with people who do not give a rat’s ass what I do (or don’t do) for a living. I also realized tonight that now that my grandmother’s situation has been really stabilized – I won’t be that gal sitting on the beach answering her cell phone every 5 minutes – which is something I could not say about the last two years when we hit the beach. (Selfish? Yes. Do I feel guilty? No. Two years of being on call 24/7 cured that.)

Now, if I can just figure out how to not have summer end, I’ll be set.